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Question Is Oscar Wilde a fucking niche reference now? :S

ChemicallyEnhanced

ChemicallyEnhanced

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Just went to pick my script up at the Pharmacy and there was a new girl there [maybe like early 20s]. I look quite a lot younger than I am [I'm a millennial but still get ID's sometimes buying cigarettes] and when I gave her my Date of Birth she was really sweet and asked about my skincare routine. I have none whatsoever...I BARELY wash it with soap and water...and told her so. So she said "What's your secret then?" and I said "I have a portrait in the attic" and...nothing. Like, ZER0 recognition. No idea what I was talking about. I saw her glance over to a co-worker [also maybe early 20s] who looked equally clueless, so I just winked and said "nevermind, it's a novel that came out when I was your age".

Like...am I tripping? It's weird that two grown adults would have no idea who Dorian Gray is, right?
 
@ChemicallyEnhanced
I think literature isn't really taught in many schools anymore. The kids all have the attention spans of goldfish because of their overexposure to social media, they don't know how to write more than couple of paragraphs anymore, nevermind reading text of any length, and the teachers just give up. Reading for pleasure also seems to not really be a thing for lots of younger people. They don't know how to really immerse themselves in a story. If it's not characters on a screen then it's 'boring'.
 
That's funny! I have all kinds of references like that that I pull on strangers in public that fall flat. It's embarrassing for me.
Once I asked a woman at work who I was actually very friendly with " How's tricks?" In my mind like from some old Humphrey Bogart movie from about 1940. Wow, did she get mad at me!!! Thought I was implying she was a prostitute, which wasn't remotely the thought in my mind. I really honestly thought she was going to report me to HR.
Funny thing, I used to say that line to all kinds of people including the big burly laborers at work who could have snapped me in half. Probably everyone thought "WTF is he talking about?".
 
chippermonk said:
That's funny! I have all kinds of references like that that I pull on strangers in public that fall flat. It's embarrassing for me.
Once I asked a woman at work who I was actually very friendly with " How's tricks?" In my mind like from some old Humphrey Bogart movie from about 1940. Wow, did she get mad at me!!! Thought I was implying she was a prostitute, which wasn't remotely the thought in my mind. I really honestly thought she was going to report me to HR.
Funny thing, I used to say that line to all kinds of people including the big burly laborers at work who could have snapped me in half. Probably everyone thought "WTF is he talking about?".
Click to expand...

That's actually a fairly common turn of phrase where I'm from xD
0r was, maybe like 15-20 years ago.

That's both funny and unfortunate she misunderstood, hopefully you didn't get in trouble!
 
chippermonk said:
Sad to say, making references to Monty Python falls flat all too often these days. I've given up on saying "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?" And forget about trying to get a nice rousing chorus of "I'm a Lumberjack" going in your local bar, smh
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🎶 "I cut down trees, I skip and jump / I like to press wild flowers / I put on women's clothing / and hang around in bars" 🎵

... Cheers! 🍺
 
“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde,
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Just went to pick my script up at the Pharmacy and there was a new girl there [maybe like early 20s]. I look quite a lot younger than I am [I'm a millennial but still get ID's sometimes buying cigarettes] and when I gave her my Date of Birth she was really sweet and asked about my skincare routine. I have none whatsoever...I BARELY wash it with soap and water...and told her so. So she said "What's your secret then?" and I said "I have a portrait in the attic" and...nothing. Like, ZER0 recognition. No idea what I was talking about. I saw her glance over to a co-worker [also maybe early 20s] who looked equally clueless, so I just winked and said "nevermind, it's a novel that came out when I was your age".

Like...am I tripping? It's weird that two grown adults would have no idea who Dorian Gray is, right?
Click to expand...
I can clearly picture this happening in my mind. UGH, it's like the new Wuthering Heights movie coming out next month on Valentine's Day, which is being marketed as "from the best romance novel of all time," also known as a 50 Shades of Grey catastrophe. It might be so bad that it's good, but I really don't think so. Thank you for sharing the story; it made me laugh heartily.
 
Pharmacy day again. Staff were discussing your "Birthsong" [the song that was #1 in the charts the week you were born]. She asked if I knew mine :D
After implying I was in my 20s when The Picture of Dorian Gray was published, I couldn't resist answering "Greensleeves"
She was like "oh, I don't know that one, I'll check it out. [my D0B, which is early 90s], right?" so I told her "yeah, but it actually came out a couple years earlier, in the 80s"*
I'm low-key excited to see her again in 14 days to see if she DID look it up Greensleeves xD
Wanna see how old I can make myself or how many VERY FAM0US things I can reference before there's any recognition of what I'm talking about.
*Technically true, I just didn't specify the 1580s
 
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